Nobody gets saved in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Nobody gets wise. Nobody even figures out what the hell is going on. And that’s the point.

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) bolts from a backwoods cult, but what does that even mean when the cult is still running her head? She lands at her sister’s fancy lake house, where she’s supposed to “get better,” [spoiler] but she can’t. She doesn’t know how. She doesn’t even know why she’s broken. And her sister? She’s just as lost, completely clueless on how to deal with a person who’s been brainwashed, manipulated, and made complicit in who-knows-what kind of violence. [/spoiler]

The cult leader, a soft-spoken sociopath played by John Hawkes, doesn’t need to chase her down—he already owns space in her skull. [spoiler] The movie flips back and forth between past and present like a bad dream, and by the time the credits roll, you realize there was never a moment where Martha actually woke up. She’s still in it. [/spoiler]

This is a movie about people who don’t know what they don’t know. The premise is simple: a lack of awareness leads to captivity. [spoiler]Martha didn’t recognize what was happening to her, so she got swallowed. Now she doesn’t recognize how to get free, so she stays trapped. The sister doesn’t see the problem, so she’s useless. Everyone’s blind, everyone’s lost, and by the time the film cuts to black, you realize nobody ever had a shot. [/spoiler]